Office 365: Should you go with a cloud-only deployment or a hybrid deployment?

Review questions

1.    Which components of Office 365 are the right ones for your organization?

Answer: Answers will vary. If you only need email, you would sign up for Exchange Online. If you need presence, instant messaging, or online meetings, you'll go with Lync Online. If you require document collaboration or an Intranet portal, you'll go with SharePoint Online. If you need all three, you'll sign up for the Office 365 suite.

2.    How many Office 365 administrators should be provisioned with Office 365?

Answer: Answers will vary. Depending on the size of your organization, you might have one user perform all of your administrative needs. For larger organizations, your administration will be delegated to a number of users.

3.    Should you go with a cloud-only deployment or a hybrid deployment?

Answer: Answers will vary. If you're a small organization or an organization with no specific requirements for on-premise servers, you may be able to run solely in the cloud. However, if you have a large number of mailboxes, SharePoint BI needs, or voice needs, you'll need to use a hybrid deployment model.

4.    How long will your Office 365 deployment take?

Answer: Answers will vary. Some deployments take just a few weeks, while others take a year or more. The constant here is that all organizations should use a three phase approach: planning, preparation, and migration.

5.    How often will the Microsoft Online Services Portal be accessed by most organizations?

Answer: Answers will vary. You may find that as an Office 365 administrator, you'll visit the portal every day to configure settings. Other organizations might only visit the administrative portal once per week or even less. Typically, the administrative portal will be used more often in the initial rollout, with usage occurring less frequently over time.

1.    How many domains should be added to an Office 365 subscription?

Answer: Answers will vary. If your organization uses a single domain (such as contoso.com), that's the only domain you'll need to add. However, some organizations use multiple domains for various business groups (due to mergers, growth, different lines of business, etc.) and might add many domains.

2.    How many DNS records will you need to update when you deploy Office 365?

Answer: Answers will vary. If you are deploying email (Exchange Online), you'll need to update your MX and CNAME records. If you're deploying a public website with SharePoint, you may need to update an A record. If you're using only using Office 365 for SharePoint Online for collaboration, you won't need to update any records